Building experiences

July 21st, 2011

Digital media requires something different, though. It’s not sufficient to just publish a narrative to the Internet. You have to build an experience around it, a system that lets the user experience the narrative but also one that responds to his or her inputs and contributions.

Khoi Vinh

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It’s got dents and burns

July 7th, 2011

You look at the shuttle, it’s not as if it’s this pristine, shining, gleaming piece of metallic technology – it looks like a ship, it’s got dents and burns and inside multiple crews have whacked the paintwork and you can see scratches and things. They are ships that have been operated and lived in and done these incredible voyages all with their individual characters.

Piers Sellers, meteorologist and NASA astronaut.

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People do things

July 1st, 2011

Agencies, departments, and organizations don’t do things — people do things. People’s names should be on things to foster both accountability and pride.

Edward Tufte.

(via John Gruber)

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Akscyn’s law

June 17th, 2011

Hypertext systems should take about 1/4 second to move from one place to another. If the delay is longer, people may be distracted; if the delay is much longer, people will stop using the system. If the delay is much shorter, people may not realize that the display has changed.

Akscyn’s law, coined in the early 80s during the development of the ZOG hypertext system.

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Dangerous by Design

June 2nd, 2011

In the last decade, from 2000 through 2009, more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States, the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month. On top of that, more than 688,000 pedestrians were injured over the decade, a number equivalent to a pedestrian being struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes.

From Transportation For America’s Dangerous by Design campaign.

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